Compliance Director & MLRO, US

What you'll do

As the Compliance Director & MLRO, US, you will lead and scale the regional compliance architecture across the United States, Canada, and expanding Americas markets, ensuring absolute financial crime compliance while supporting regional business expansion. Leading a regional team of compliance specialists and localized MLROs, you will serve as the primary liaison for federal and state regulatory bodies, oversee regional compliance operations, and monitor shifting regulatory developments. You will act as the definitive second-line regional authority, providing compliance sign-off on complex risk decisions, guiding new license applications (including US state money transmitter licenses), and advising on product and customer use cases. You will work closely with the global FCC leadership team, product executives, and regional business heads to ensure compliance is a strategic enabler of growth.

This role is based in the US.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and scale the AMER regional compliance team, ensuring robust regulatory coverage, local compliance sovereignty, and consistent application of global standards across all active jurisdictions and states.
• Act as the primary regulatory liaison for the AMER region, managing day-to-day relationships, complex regulatory inquiries, and high-stakes examinations with federal and state authorities (including FinCEN, NYDFS, state banking departments, and FINTRAC).
• Oversee and execute local financial crime operations and reporting workflows in instances where regional regulatory mandates strictly require second-line actions to be performed within the region or specific state jurisdictions.
• Monitor the AMER regulatory landscape for shifting BSA/AML, USA PATRIOT Act, sanctions, and financial crime developments, ensuring material updates are proactively analyzed and escalated to the Global Policy team for framework integration.
• Serve as the definitive regional second-line authority, providing formal compliance sign-off on high-risk decisions and complex escalations elevated to the Governance and Risk Committee (GRC).
• Provide strategic regulatory guidance and compliance advisory on Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs), novel customer use cases, and new regional or state license applications to enable safe, compliant market entry.
• Lead the deployment and calibration of specialized financial crime compliance training curricula for regional business units, commercial teams, and US/AMER staff to foster a risk-aware operational culture.

Who you are

We're looking for people who meet the minimum requirements for this role. The preferred qualifications are great to have, but are not mandatory.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Law, Criminology, Public Policy, Finance, Business Administration, or a related analytical field.
• CAMS certification or an equivalent globally recognized compliance credential.
• 12 to 15+ years of experience in AML, Sanctions, and Financial Crime Compliance within financial services, fintech, payments, or banking.
• At least 5+ years of senior leadership experience managing multi-jurisdictional compliance teams or serving as a designated BSA/AML Officer or MLRO within the US or Canada.
• Proven track record of interacting directly with AMER regulators (such as FinCEN, NYDFS, state regulators, or FINTRAC) and successfully managing complex regulatory examinations and state licensing audits.
• Experience providing compliance advisory on product rollouts, US state money transmitter licensing strategies, and complex corporate customer use cases within a matrixed environment.
• A high-ownership, pragmatic approach, with excellent communication and stakeholder management skills to influence cross-functional executives and external partners.

Preferred qualifications

• Advanced degree such as a Juris Doctor (JD) or a Master’s degree in Regulatory Compliance, Law, or Financial Crime.
• Advanced professional designations such as CAMS-Audit, CGSS (Certified Global Sanctions Specialist), or CAMS-RM (Risk Management).
• Deep fintech and payments experience, including a strong operational understanding of US money transmission, Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), virtual accounts, multi-currency wallets, and cross-border payment mechanisms.
• Experience partnering closely with Product, Risk, and Commercial teams to support high-velocity feature launches and complex corporate onboarding workflows.
• Strong data literacy and comfort utilizing operational metrics, automated GRC systems, and dashboards to track compliance metrics and detect regional risk drift.

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Equal opportunityAirwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.